Archive for February, 2010

Android Mobile OS and The Motorola Droid

22 Feb 2010 at 20:18

Terry Moore

Android, Mobile

No Comment

My company switch all of our phones from Verizon to AT&T and so we all got iPhones which was fine so we thought but as it turns out AT&T sucks.  Terrible coverage.  The iPhone on the other hand is a decent phone but is very limited.  If it wasn’t for jailbreaking the phone and adding the  Cyndia repository to it the phone would be a piece of shit.

About 2 months after we made the switch Verizon came out with the Motorola Driod and today, 6 months later, my co-worker decided to get one for his personal phone.  I only got to play with it for about 5 minutes but all I have to say Android is awesome.  I really cant wait to get a phone with this OS installed on it.  Now the Droid hardware wasn’t anything to write home about but the OS is definitely better than the iPhone.  Plus you actually have the freedom on installing anything you want on this and aren’t in the mercy of Apple.

Needless to say, I will have a phone runny Android hopefully sooner than later. Maybe the Nexus One? I hope so!

Recover Data From a Formatted Hard Drive

19 Feb 2010 at 21:15

Terry Moore

Awesome, How To, Linux, Technical, Windows

No Comment

Testdisk great piece of software recover data from a bad hard drive or a hard drive that has been accidentally formatted.

I discovered this software when I accidentally formatted my work laptop which was running Gentoo Linux.  Its a long story as to how I formatted the hard drive but I didn’t have a backup of my data so I was basically screwed, or so I thought.  I did some Google searches and came across Testdisk.  Once I figured out how to use it I managed to restore my system back to the original Dell Windows XP installation.  Yes that is correct it restored and booted.   I realised that I restore to wrong data and thought that I was now really screwed but I fired up the software again and was able to total restore my Linux system.  If memory serves me I had to reconfigure Grub but my system was restored and my data was safe.  Needless to say I was very very happy.  Sorry I don’t have many details on what I did to recover my data but it was over 3 years ago that I did this.

I am basically writing this post for two reason; 1) to let you know how awesome this software is and 2) I always forget the name of this software and it takes me 20-30 minutes to find it when I need it to recover data, so I am using this as a bookmark.

Here is a guide from Linux.com that gives you a run down on restoring data when you wipe your drive.

If you do use this software and are able to recover data please let me know, I like hearing the success stories.

Very Cool Sonic Boom Meets Sun Dog

17 Feb 2010 at 22:01

Terry Moore

Awesome, Video

No Comment

This video was taken from the Solar Dynamics Observatory launch on February 11, 2010.  This awesome sonic boom happens around the 1:30 mark of the video.

A sun dog is a prismatic bright spot in the sky caused by sun shining through ice crystals. The Atlas V rocket exceeded the speed of sound in this layer of ice crystals, making the shock wave visible from the ground. The announcer can be heard in the video saying, “The vehicle is now supersonic.”

Read more on Sun Dogs on wikipedia

How to: Mount A USB Drive Read Only In Windows XP/Vista/7

15 Feb 2010 at 13:17

Terry Moore

How To, Windows

No Comment

There are times that it would be nice to mount a drive in Windows and set it to read only to avoid accidentally over writing data on that drive. After some Google searching this is what I found. This will only work on Windows XP sp2 and later and Windows 7. I have not tested it on Vista although I assume that it will work.

Step 1
Open regedit.exe
Start > Run Type regedit.exe
Click OK

Step 2
Navigate to the following registry key.  It may not exist there for you will have to create it.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

Step 3
Next create a new DWORD called WriteProtect and give it a value of 1

Step 4
Now plug in your USB drive and you will not be able to write to the device.

To make it writable again you will have to change the WriteProtect DWORD to 0 and unplug and replug in your device.